Conflict, Terrorism and the Media in Asia

There are many different kinds of sub-national conflicts across Asia, that have a variety of different origins, but since September 11, 2001 many of them have been increasingly portrayed and drivers in the west as a part of the global terrorist threat, to be dealt with by the ‘War on Terror'. This book examines a range of such conflicts, focusing in particular on those in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, China and India. It shows how, despite their significant differences, they share the role of the media as an interlocutor between the combatants, government and society, and explores how the media- including the ‘new media' such as the internet exercises the role. The book raises a number of issues concerning how the media report different kinds of political violence and conflict, including issues of impartiality in the media's relations with government and insurgents, and how the focus on the ‘War on terror' has led to some forms of violence- notably those employed by states. It argues that whilst the media plays a major role in sub-state conflicts, its impacts including those of the new media are generally limited, even the US has failed to use the media effectively to influence regional media outputs. Overall, this book is a thorough examination of the role of the media in relation to conflict and terrorism in Asia.

The media is the principle mechanism by which those communications are disseminated, but it is more than just a passive conduit for relaying messages. The media is a political actor in its own right and is capable of playing a number of political roles, which include agent of stability, agent of restraint (through monitoring and challenging government) and agent of change.

For those engaged in political violence the objective is to use violence to acquire heightened attention from the public, political elites and policy making circles, as a trigger to promote debate on their objectives. Violence serves as a Universal key to focus media attention and gain publicity, thereby enabling non-state combatants to set the media agenda. It is through setting the media agenda and influencing political debates the combatants transform their violence in to political power. In the same way, governments communicate their own messages to challenge the legitimacy of the methods, ideology and objectives of their opponents and to maintain popular and political support. This is typically achieved through negative reporting of their opponent's ideology and objectives, combined with the positive reporting of the political and security initiatives that the government is employing. Again the mainstream media is the principle mechanism for communicating these messages.

The first article by Toby Miller US Journalism: Servant of the Nation, Scourge of the Truth? lays out that how the mainstream US media, notably network and cable televisions, have worked as effective spokespeople for nationalism, in ways that coincide with the enunciation of national interest by the state. Almost three quarters of the US public supported the invasion of Iraq. Miller points out that the way the US state and media comport themselves has an impact on the rest of the world whereby the opinions are moulded in US's favour. He asserts that, in the service of the nation, mainstream journalism has become a baying scourge of the truth.

The second chapter "Al Qaeda and the struggle for moderate Islam in Malasyia" by Benjamin Cole attempts to understand the impact of media in the Malaysian society. He argues that Malasyian people are subject to numerous cross cutting information flows from militant and governments through the mainstream media and new media. The impact on community action and the growth of militancy with in Malasyia is difficult to assess, but it is important to bear in mind that Malasyia is not a fertile recruiting ground for militant groups because the majority of Malasyian Muslims follow a moderate view of Islam. Another reason why it is so difficult to assess media impacts on community action is because there are limited opportunities for direct political action in Malasyia. The mainstream media acts as an agent of stability by reflecting and re-enforcing the views of both the government and mainstream public opinion. The media is not, however, totally an instrument of government, and sections of the media do attempt to perform a limited role as an agent of restraint in challenging the government, although there is little evidence of it having any impact.

The link between the communication media and political change remains ambiguous, even in Indonesia, where the media and the control of information clearly had a role in the creation and the survival of Suharto's Indonesia, as well as the collapse of the President's new order. The third chapter "Perning in the Gyre: Indonesia, the globalised media and the ‘War on terror'" by Jonathan Woodier states that while national level censorship was formally defeated with the collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998, in the delicately imagined state, elements of the old power elite are seeking to use the media to further their ambitions and interests, as the collapse of the old Suharto system and the highly centralized state authority has ‘opened the door for a new struggle to reforge coalitions and build regimes.' Though the end of the Suharto era brought a drastic change in the freedom of media that contributed to the emergence of a public sphere and civil society, Woodier maintains that at the edges of shrinking states many Journalists including the foreign media are under threat. Now, the move to criminalize the work of journalists and the use of defamation laws to silence critics marks concerted efforts by the political elites to regain central control over the flow of information within and across the borders of the state.

The mainstream media has made some significant progress in improving the quality of its reporting of sub-national conflicts. The fourth chapter ‘The Philippines Media: Agent of stability or restraints?' by Benjamin Cole assesses how the media has reported these sub-national conflicts since 2000, the extent to which the various groups and communities engaged in with the government have been able to influence media outputs and the impacts that the media has had on these conflicts.

Benjamin Cole states that prior to 2004 the media had exacerbated the sense of marginalisation felt by different cultural and religious groups, especially the Muslim Community, through its negative stereotyping and prolifing. Headlines regularly identified ‘Muslim bandits' and ‘Muslim kidnappers'. By 2004 however, such headlines had largely disappeared from newspapers. Reporting of the (Jemaah Islamiyah) JI and (Abu Sayyaf Group) ASG is still one sided, and the cock fighting analogy is still prevalent to varying degrees in reporting the military dimensions of all of these conflicts. Although, some elements of the Filipino media have increasingly fulfilled the role of agent of restraint, an independent media together with the new media are not able to act as agents of change in reporting about these conflicts. Despite occasionally being able to politically discomfit the government, the practical impact of this reporting has been limited. The media has not generated any pressure on the government to make significant concessions to any of them. It has however created an image of groups like (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) MILF and the Communist Party of China (CPP) - (New Peoples Army) NPA as secessionist or revolutionary and the ASG and JI as terrorist groups, that helped a political and public sphere to negotiate with former groups and find solutions. But, Cole points out the search for negotiation are again threatened by the media's tendency to identify indigenous conflicts with the ‘war on terror'.

In Gujarat a heavy Pro-Hindutva bias has challenged the role of media as an agent of restraint. The fifth chapter "Shooting the messenger? Political violence, Gujarat 2002 and the Indian news media" by Prasun Sonwalkar states that the level of access that a group or community has also tends to vary between different sections of the media, which can have a significant impact on determining which audiences see their messages. In Gujarat for instance, the bulk of the media reported the violence boldly and independently, but the two local newspapers, which were most likely to have been read by those sections of the Hindu community, who formed the politically mobilized mob, had a heavy Pro-Hindutva bias. This would have limited the ability of the media to act as a restraining influence on those perpetrating the violence.

The sixth chapter "Uyghur separatism and nationalism in Xinjiang" by Michael Dillon elaborates that media coverage of the conflict in Xinjiang has been patchy, to say the least. As the media in China is state controlled and the Chinese government has strongly discouraged journalists from visiting Xinjiang and for many years, western journalists based in Beijing were not allowed to visit the region at all on pain of losing their accreditation. The authorities have arranged carefully managed visits for groups of journalists since China's declaration of its support for the ‘War on terror' in an attempt to garner international support for the suppression of East Turkistan sentiments, but access to ordinary Uyghurs, particularly those living in outlying areas, has been severely restricted.

But silence on the issue has been broken since upsurge of the separatist movement in 1990s by a number of books published in Chinese which have taken a very confident attitude towards Beijing's suppression of the Uyghurs and have in doing so provided an unprecedented amount of detailed information both about the separatist movement and the methods used by Beijing to contain it. The internet is becoming a more widely available in Xinjiang but this is subject to regular monitoring by the Public Security Bureau and there is in any case regular filtering of internet content throughout the whole of China. Because of this the internet has not been used as a major vehicle for transmitting information about the separatist cause, but it has increased the availability of information from outside Xinjiang.

Although the media has played a role in the development of the independence movement in Xinjiang, it has not been a major consideration. Since the movement is considered illegal and all of its operations as clandestine, it has no access to the mainstream state controlled media in China.

In the concluding part of this book Benjamin Cole tries to understand that groups and communities engaged in, or suffering from, violent political activity across Asia are attempting to access the media broadly for similar purposes. All of these groups and communities have been able to successfully access the media and influence its agendas, through using violence. But the level of access that different groups and minority communities have to the mainstream media varies widely between states and even between different groups within the same state. Since most of these governments work to deny these groups and communities access to the media and attempt to control media outputs, the level of access that each group or community has is primarily determined by the extent of media freedom in each state.

In all, the book with diverse chapters offers a clear picture of the role of media as an interlocutor between government, non-combatant groups and society in South Asia. The impact of the media on the conflicts identified in this book has been varied but generally limited. In particular it appears from the different chapters that there is no co-relation between media out puts and the spread of militant ideologies, and neither has media reporting generated widespread public or political pressure to accede to the demands of any of these groups. Though almost all the chapters highlight the role of state in manipulating the Media they nevertheless emphasize on the freedom of press and increasing acceptance of media in a larger civil society.

Naresh Kumar
Research Scholar
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi
Naresh_jmu@yahoo.com